Speaking in an interview with FMT, the tourism and culture minister said there were simply not enough facts at the moment to determine what the offshore accounts exposed in the leak were meant for.

“It’s too early, we have nothing. It’s just a report and even if action needs to be taken, it’s not going to happen yesterday or tomorrow. It’s going to take some time.

“We cannot make a knee-jerk decision where we hear about this and immediately condemn those named.

“We don’t know what the facts are, but if anyone of them has breached national or international laws, then certainly action should be taken.”

However, Nazri reiterated that it was not illegal to have offshore accounts.

The Umno Supreme Council member was responding to a statement issued by Klang MP Charles Santiago, who on Wednesday said that by keeping money overseas, those named in the Panama Papers had deprived underprivileged Malaysians.

He said taxes could have been collected from the overseas money and the revenue could have been utilised for public purposes such as to subsidise healthcare, food and tertiary education.

The Panama Papers have been described as the largest data leak that journalists have ever worked with, comprising 11.5 million documents that shed light on 214,000 shell companies. They were leaked to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.